The Chemical and Allied Industries' Association (CAIA's) Responsible Care workshops took place in Johannesburg and Durban on 11 and 12 March 2010 respectively. The title of the workshops was ‘Process Safety - a significant challenge!' The workshops aimed to assist members to understand the benefits of risk reduction for companies via sound Process Safety Management systems and allowed for the sharing of best practice amongst chemical companies and their allies. Focus topics included the following:
• What process safety is, its history, benefits for the chemical industry and legal framework within South Africa
• The impact of human behaviour on process safety within the chemical industry
• The new South African pressure equipment regulations
• Chemical Compatibility Charts as a process safety tool
• How to measure process safety performance
• CAIA's process safety role in order to service chemical industry in South Africa
• Mechanical integrity in process safety
• How to thoroughly investigate process safety incidents in order to identify the chain of events and causes so that corrective measures can be developed and implemented

Louise Lindeque of CAIA outlined its growing role in promoting process safety within the chemical industry. The main vehicle for this is the creation of a Process Safety Forum. This quarterly meeting of interested parties is chaired by Dr Bernhard Eigenhuis of Sasol. The Forum promotes the sharing of good practice and the tabling of Process Safety tools and training. Workshops aimed at educating chemical industry employees are held regularly across the country.

The failure of mechanical integrity has been the cause of many process incidents. The best-known incident in South Africa occurred in Potchefstroom in 1973 when ammonia escaped from a storage tank. Multiple fatalities resulted. David Russel of Ardeer Engineering outlined the requirements for maintaining mechanical integrity. This part of Process Safety is a very specialized area with expert and professional input required in may areas. NDT and QA are two such areas. The layers of protection is a key concept in preventing and dealing with loss of containment. The quality of operations plays a big role in minimizing the failure of equipment.

An interactive session was held using the BP Texas City disaster in 2005 as a case study. Led by Neels Korf of Dow, 6sixteams analysed the incident and came up with root causes of the accident and possible solutions. This was an excellent training session for the whole group.

The Workshop was very successful judging by the number of participants and the extent of the interaction during the day. 

The following presentations may be downloaded from CAIA's website (www.caia.co.za):
• Introduction to Process Safety (Nigel Coni)
• Human Behaviour and its impact on Process Safety in the Chemical Industry (Neil Franklin)
• The new Pressure Equipment Regulations - approaching the classification of hazardous chemical substances (Bernhard Eigenhuis)
• Chemical Compatibility Charts as a Process Safety Tool (Megan van der Scholtz)
• Process Safety Indicators of Performance (Francois Holtzhausen)
• CAIA's Process Safety role within the Chemical Industry (Louise Lindeque)
• The importance of Mechanical Integrity (Dave Russel)
• Process Safety Case Study - interactive session (Neels Korf)
For more information telephone +27 11 482 1671.